5-8 Photos

I had a little photo shoot with Ella. Then I played in Photoshop Elements since she took a long nap.  Here are some that I took. It wasn't bright when I started but the sun was coming out so her eyes weren't as wide as they could have been. Also, when she starts smiling big her eyes get smaller.  Which one is your favorite?

I used Pioneer Woman actions but then would undo to only use 1/3 of what her action was doing. 

Do you edit photos? What do you do? Do you have favorite actions?

Ella was trying to roll over while I was taking her pictures. She loves to roll anymore. She had some trouble since she was on a bean bag and kept sinking in.

Look at her cute feet. She crossed her legs like that herself.

I got a few good smiles but don't like putting her off center even though that's usually good. I think I'll recrop a few if I find time.

You can see the purple bean bag in a lot of these. I did clone out little patches but didn't fix it on all of them.

Ella is a cute sitter on the bean bag. I can't wait until she can sit on her own.

She's just chilling. No big deal.  We were probably outside for less than 5 minutes. I just took a lot of pictures in a short time.

Photoshop Actions

I found an old email that I sent to myself with some photoshop actions. I downloaded a few and tried them out.  In the past I've used Actions from Pioneer Woman. These are from some random site that shows you 40 vintage + retro actions. About half of them no longer work.  One of them linked to another site with a ton.  Actions are cool because you just click once and you get some effect.  Sometimes it's not the effect you want so you just undo that and click another button. It is still easier than trying to figure something out on your own.  So far I have liked Pioneer Woman's the best because she has all the actions grouped and she names them better than "Action 1" and "Action 2."

I think the HDR one looks cool in a this picture looks fake kind of way.

The top left photo is the original and it was taken on September 2.

8.15

Since I have been spending so much time reading and learning, I needed to clean desperately.  I woke up and started doing that with breaks of sitting at my computer to check my email.  I did wake up to 25 emails and most were from actual people.  I finally carried some stuff down to our storage room.  I carried the recycling to the car. (Maybe one of these days we'll recycle it.)  I carried our Goodwill donations to the car too. I might have made 6 trips downstairs.

We got our grill back.  They opened our balcony days ago but we were waiting for the contractors to get it back to us.   Now we just have to buy propane and we can cook on the grill.  Well it's scary high out there (to me anyway).  So maybe I'll make Dave cook until I can somehow get more used to it out there.  Dave even said it was slightly scary for him because he's too tall for the railing.  I told him now he has me even more scared.

I did laundry and used my drying rack outside on the balcony.  I believe this is the first time I will have clothes dried outside in all my life. I had to put one shirt under another shirt because it kept blowing off the rack.

I talked to my mom on the phone for an hour.

I made grilled turkey and cheese for lunch and then the same thing for dinner. I made Dave grilled ham and cheese.  He tells me it is supposed to be grilled cheese with a touch of ham not grilled ham and cheese. I said to me there should be a substantial amount of ham.  What is your opinion on this?  I made mine about an inch thing with meat but knew Dave wouldn't like that so his was less than half that. He still said it was too much.  Too bad I didn't have a picture of his to compare to mine. I almost called my  grilled turkey and cheese a turkey melt but I think they have more things on them which I didn't have.

I cleaned off the counter height counter and most of the normal counter today.  It was the first time the junk has been off of there since we moved in.  Now I want it to stay neat.  I doubt that will happen.  As soon as Dave came home, he opened a package and had the box, fan, packing material, and receipt already all sprawled out over it.   I also swept and mopped the kitchen floor and vacuumed the rest of the apartment.  It is nice to see stuff clean but boy do I wish it would just magically get clean.

Our hallway is finally clean going into the office. Stuff accumulated there that needed to go down into storage.

After dinner, I went for a run. I almost forgot too! I finished a few minutes after 8 and it was still light enough for my liking.

I showed Dave stuff I did with all my photoshopping skills on the running pictures. Then he got distracted and said he knew how to fix something.  Over an hour later he was still sitting at my computer doing stuff in Photoshop. I also showed him how to remove the signs on the edge of the trail.  He was impressed.

Here's an example of a before and after that I showed him. I'm impressed by it. I'm no professional so my standards are lower. It doesn't take that long to edit the photos but my problem is that I go in and edit all 150 instead of picking the best 5.  What do you think of the photos above?  Can you pick out everything I removed?

We watched Big Brother.  Then I went back to my computer to work on all the little things on my to-do list. I really don't know what people do that don't use a computer all the time. I feel like there isn't much else to do around the house.

I accidentally stayed up past 3am and still only got 72% of my to-do list done.  There were more things I could have done but the time wasn't worth it at that late in the day.  I wanted it to be my top completion and it's tied with 7th. Maybe someday I'll post my To-do list completion percent graph.

Photoshop

So I randomly found a Photoshop tutorial on youtube. I gave it a shot with a picture that was showing up in my picasa at the time. I probably should have gone through at least a few pictures to find the best one but oh well. It's from May 3.

Here's the before and after.  This is what I'd look like without huge bags under my eyes I guess.   I want to do it again and pick a picture where I have more eye make-up on and see how that one looks.

It probably took me 30 minutes and I was constantly pausing her video.
I think I look too fake without all my lines but it was still fun to do. I didn't even take them all out.  The after pictures look more like me in 2005.

But then again here's a picture from March 18, 2012 and I don't seem to have all the bags under my eyes. (I didn't edit this photo at all.) And it is a coincidence I'm wearing the same shirt.

Down the Bog

Callie and Griff visited PA but I'm not there this time to hang out with them. So I photoshopped a picture Timmy put on facebook.  I couldn't find a good picture of me in outdoor lighting where I wasn't in pants or a skirt so I decided to make it extra ridiculous.

Now my Photoshop skills are not that good so I didn't know how to move me into the picture so I had to expand the canvas on the picture of me and put the background picture in it. Well I clearly put myself too close to the middle but I didn't know how to fix it. So this is the result.  It almost looks like I photoshopped Timmy in because he looks like a giant.

I really should quit playing in Photoshop and should finish unpacking this apartment. I don't even put anything related to unpacking on my to-do list anymore.